Russia
Russia (/ˈrʌʃə/ (About this sound listen); Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossiya, IPA: rɐˈsʲijə), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Росси́йская Федера́ция, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya, IPA: fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə), is a sovereign country in Eurasia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 144 million people at the end of December 2017. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern; about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Russia's capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world; other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait. The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus' ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus' lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus'. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world's first constitutionally socialist state.23 The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, and emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality and sole successor state of the Soviet Union. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic. The Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015.30 Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as a member of the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), along with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Russian Military Leaders # Daniel - 1276 to 1303 # Yury - 1303 to 1325 # Ivan I - 1325 to 1340 # Semyon (Simeon) - 1340 to 1353 # Ivan II - 1353 to 1359 # Dmitry (II) - Donskoy 1359-89 # Vasily I - 1389 to 1425 # Vasily II - 1425 to 1462 # Ivan III - 1462 to 1505 # Vasily III - 1505 to 1533 # Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) - 1533 to 1584 # Fyodor I - 1584 to 1598 # Boris Godunov - 1598 to 1605 # Fyodor II - 1605 # False Dmitry - 1605 to 1606 # Vasily (IV) Shuysky - 1606 to 1610 # Interregnum - 1610 to 1612 # Michael - 1613 to 1645 # Alexis - 1645 to 1676 # Fyodor III - 1676 to 1682 # Peter I (Ivan V co-ruler 1682-96) - 1682 to 1725 # Catherine I - 1725 to 1727 # Peter II - 1727 to 1730 # Anna - 1730 to 1740 # Ivan VI - 1740 to 1741 # Elizabeth - 1741 to 1761 # Peter III - 761 to 1762 # Catherine II (Catherine the Great)- 1762 to 1796 # Paul - 1796 to 1801 # Alexander I - 1801 to 1825 # Nicholas I - 1825 to 1855 # Alexander II - 1855 to 1881 # Alexander III - 1881 to 1894 # Nicholas II - 1894 to 1917 # Vladimir Lenin - 1917 to 1924 # Joseph Stalin - 1924 to 53 # Georgy Malenkov - 1953 # Nikita Khrushchev - 1953 to 1964 # Leonid Brezhnev - 1964 to 1982 # Yury Andropov - 1982 to 1984 # Konstantin Chernenko - 1984 to 1985 # Mikhail Gorbachev - 1985 to 1991 # Boris Yeltsin - 1991 to 1999 # Vladimir Putin - 1999 to 2008 # Dmitry Medvedev - 2008 to 2012 # Vladimir Putin - 2012 to